Piltdown Superman

In cold, dark oceans lives a kind of whale called the narwhal. Kind of unsettling at first because of that single long horn growing out of its head like the mythical unicorn horse thing. It is difficult enough to study creatures who cannot have a discussion and answer questions, but even more so with elusive sea critters. Narwhal illustration from Harper's , 1902, via Flickr / Internet Archive The horn is used to puncture ships below the waterline, causing them to sink — "No, Cowboy Bob, you're thinking of the Nautilus  submarine in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ". Oh, right. Well, the submarine did have a pointed thing, but never mind. As I said earlier, it can be difficult to learn about elusive sea creatures. There are many speculations that seem reasonable, and we can hope for further research. The horn is not a horn, but a tusk — a very large tooth. Unlike our teeth, the sensitive part is on the outside, and the narwhal may be able to sense changes

We seem to be living in a time of laziness and short attention spans, and it’s getting worse. People want flashy entertainment in movies, but how often do people read books nowadays? For that matter, writers of weblogs are being advised to keep it short. If someone writes a detailed comment about a post or article, they may get a tl;dr (Too long; didn’t read) reply. It was originally used in response to unnecessarily long, tedious comments, but now it’s thrown around with reckless abandon — even on good comments. Credit: Freeimages / Christian Carollo Short Attention Spans and Social Media I reckon one problem in today’s society is that people are tightly scheduled, even down to the minute. We don't want to take the time to read and learn. Another problem that adds to shorter attention spans is social media. (At The Question Evolution Project , we can post a link to a brilliant article, and five people click “Like”. Post a picture with a funny caption (often called a me

Dinosaur trackways have been around for a while, and biblical creationists are giving them quite a bit of attention lately. Although soft tissues in dinosaurs and other critters have been found, defying deep time speculations of secularists, tracks are also problematic for secular scientists. The Brobdingnagian trackways down yonder in South America are worthy of note. Credit: Jerry Daykin ( CC by 2.0 ) We know that tracks made in sand, clay, or other squishy stuff are not likely to fossilize because this process must happen rapidly and under the right conditions. The Cal Orcko tracks are numerous, first discovered in 1985 by a limestone mining company. When further tracks were uncovered in the 1990s, they realized that a bit of a mountain full of tracks existed. If you have a notion to see the trackways for your ownself, better get a move on because they may not be available much longer. Interesting that they can be seen deteriorating in just a few years, but secularists ex

Tripod designs are efficient, whether to steady a camera or maybe Martian fighting machines with heat rays and stuff. Objects built with three legs are quite sturdy and secure, very unlikely to wobble. One surprising place to find a tripod is in the deep blue sea. Well, not so much blue at such depths. The tripod fish sets itself up on the sea floor and waits for supper. Credit: NOAA via Wikimedia Commons They are not hunters as you may have gathered, preferring instead for zooplankton to come drifting along. If you've watched fish in an aquarium, they move up and down while staying horizontal. That is from using the swim bladder. Tripod fish have those as well, but they are only suitable for the tremendous depths and pressures where they live. They can also reproduce without a mate. There are many features built into the tripod fish that clearly highlight the Master Engineer's work, and thwart evolutionary explanations. One of the least–well-understood ecosystems in t

In late 2018, Dr. He Jiankui produced the first genetically-modified babies (see " Genetic Human Experimentation and Ethics " for commentary and a link to an insightful article). Jiankui used the CRISPR gene editing system, which takes skill and intelligence. Scientists with both secular and Christian worldviews condemned his actions. Essentially, those twin girls are human guinea pigs. Assembled from graphics obtained at Openclipart While scientists (like other folks) want to know what makes things work, but sometimes a little knowledge leads to a passel of hubris. People with a materialistic worldview — believing that life is the product of time, chance, and random processes — are not likely to show good judgment when it comes to ethics. Jiankui's wild gallop outraged both secular (materialists) and Christian professionals, which gives an indications of how egregious his transgressions were. Even the leftist-leaning publication The Atlantic published a list of pr

Several years ago, biblical creationists commenced to doing research in the Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE) project. This detailed physics and chemistry work was upsetting to proponents of deep time. Secularists have tried to wave off the results to no avail. Volcanic eruption in Hawaii image credit: Unsplash / Marc Szeglat Scientists, whether naturalists or creationists, start with their presuppositions. Dr. Russell Humphreys (who accurately predicted the magnetic fields of several planets based on the biblical view of creation and was far more accurate than secular scientists) was at the forefront of the RATE project. They examined granitic rock that was supposed to be 1.5 billion years old. Radioactive processes produced helium in the rocks, and the helium/zircon measurements support an age of the earth that is thousands, not billions, of years old. Zircons are tiny crystals of zirconium silicate (ZrSiO 4 ) that originate in igneous rock, which forms when volc

It is probably human nature to wonder how something happened, such as when someone gets new employment or when a vehicle is seen in a ditch. Following close on the heels of why is the question of how something happened. Secular scientists disrelish admitting that they really do not have the answers to many things, so they use the scientific principle of Making Things Up™. This is frequently evident in the tall tales of cosmologists and cosmogonists. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA , Acknowledgement: Sarajedini et al (Usage does not imply endorsement of site content) There are a couple of things that we have seen here many times before. First, scientists are like the rest of us and interpret data based on their presuppositions. Second, the narrative (which includes models) drives the interpretation. If facts interfere with the story, the facts are put out to pasture. Two articles are linked below that illustrate how secularists would rather tell cosmic evolution stories than adm

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Every once in a while, disciples of Darwin want to slap leather with biblical creationists but lack civility, logic, and science. (They get especially obstreperous with Question Evolution Day up yonder.) Here are a few things to consider. I like to draw from my own experiences to keep things personal and relatable, and I can be more accurate about what is going on. This post has more graphics than usual. Smoke of a .45 , 1905, Charles M. Russell It is mighty helpful to have a handle on the subjects we're challenged on and know how to deal with these types. We can expect ad hominem remarks as well as straw man, red herring, poisoning the well, and other logical fallacies . One ridiculous charge is that biblical creation science is the domain of "fundamentalists", which is not only an ad hominem, but a red herring (distraction) and a straw man (build up something inaccurate to tear it down). What kind of "fundamentalist"? There

As creationists have been pointing out for a mighty long time, we do not see any sign of fossils forming today or in the recent past. Interesting if you study on it, because there are billions of the things all over the earth. Uniformitarian dogma tells us that present processes are the key to the past, but that does not explain what is observed. Archaeopteryx fossil at "secret" University of California Museum of Paleontology Credit: Paul Abramson / Creationism.org When something dies, it gets scavenged. The Master Engineer put cleanup crews in place ranging from microorganisms to larger creatures that aren't so particular about what they eat. (Leftovers from the big critters get taken care of by the smaller ones, including the micro stuff.) Something else we have been saying for a long time is that things have to be buried quickly so things can commence to fossilizing; it is conditions, not time, that cause fossils for the most part. This has even been demonstra

Mayhaps it is just my imagination, but it seems that there has been a passel of news about dinosaur feathers in the news lately. Darwinists cannot give evidence for dinosaur-to-bird evolution, nor can they give a plausible hypothesis for the alleged evolution of the feather itself . Now there is a new problem with pterosaur fuzz. Credit: Pixabay / Efraimstochter Since the narrative drives the interpretation of the evidence, and Darwinoids see what they want to see, fuzzy areas in fossils are taken to be "feathers", but that claim is not supported. Naturally, the secular science industry press is all atwitter about these alleged feathers. Several problems arise, including how feathers on pterosaurs would mean that feathers were contemporaneous with dinosaurs and predated birds. What next, will they extrapolate to feathered crocodiles? Of course, secularists cannot allow themselves to discard their self-refuting notions and cowboy up to the fact that the world is yo